Not everyone likes insects and we tend to have little awareness of them, save for those that drink nectar or blood. Some are delicately beautiful, some frighteningly hideous. More than a million species are known (25,000 in Britain) and perhaps five million more may exist unknown.
They first appeared more than 300 million years ago and their biomass vastly exceeds that of humans: about three quarters of all animals are insects, although the total population in Britain has been falling alarmingly.
They are astonishing masterpieces of miniaturised creation, their tiny, six-legged, three-part bodies capable of feats of survival, strength, flight, orientation, organisation, fecundity and quite possibly sentience that are hard to appreciate, let alone understand.
'Their tiny size and light framework means they are proportionately much stronger than large animals'
Most insects hatch from eggs into larvae of often unappealing kinds and so they may remain for years, periodically moulting into larger exoskeletons called cuticles. They emerge, transformed, from their final moult into wondrously intricate creatures, usually four-winged and compound-eyed, able, according to type, to fly, dig, swim, build, hunt, navigate or fight and desperately keen to mate and create successors.
Insects have no internal bones, lungs or active blood circulation, relying on passive oxygen transfer through hair-lined openings and various tubes within their haemolymph-filled bodies. Some make sounds. Their brains are partly in their heads — processing brilliant vision, antennae input and eating — and partly in decentralised ganglia elsewhere, which means that a beheaded insect may survive for a day or two until it starves.
More than half are vegetarian, most are potential food for other animals and many eat each other. Insects cannot grow bigger than they do because of their inability to absorb more oxygen. Millions of years ago, there was more oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere — 35% compared with 21% now — which enabled them to be larger. The shedding and regrowth of their carapaces also renders them periodically unstructured and helpless.
Their tiny size and light framework means they are proportionately much stronger than large animals, most of whose strength is needed to carry their substantial bodies. The biological physics of this, the square-cube law — a cross-section of insect muscle is relatively large compared with the mass it supports — is well understood by experts.
Insect wings, wafer-thin membranes of tissue powered by muscles working at the edge of biological possibility, beat in some cases at 1,000 times a second, faster than nervous systems can operate.
‘It is quite impossible to overlook the importance of insects,’ emphasises George McGavin, former curator at Oxford’s Museum of Natural History, one of Britain’s leading entomologists and an infectiously enthusiastic guide to the subject, who warns without hyperbole that ‘they are essential for the welfare of our planet’ to keep the ecosystem functioning.
He also observes that research indicates they probably feel pain, although not quite as fish, birds or mammals do. As the examples that follow demonstrate, we might consider ourselves much more accomplished than insects, but this could be a misconception. What is clear, however, is that, although we need insects, they do not need us.
'Only 2in long and lighter than a silk handkerchief'
The Black-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum) is a medium-large dragonfly measuring 44 to 49 mm in length.
After hatching, dragonflies spend up to five years underwater as carnivorous larvae, moulting a dozen times and eating prey such as tadpoles. Eventually, they climb a reed, unzip their larval skin and, perhaps with a frisson of joy, open two pairs of folded wings and transform into elegant, swift, airborne hunters with 360-degree vision, capable of reaching speeds of 40mph, hovering, moving sideways, backwards or vertically.
They occasionally catch hummingbirds in the US. Males often mate when flying in tandem with a captured female; if they land, he will fastidiously endeavour to empty her of any sperm she may already have acquired before supplying his own.
Dragonflies have quite astonishing range: globe skimmers (rare in Britain) are only 2in long, lighter than a silk handkerchief and can fly 3,700 miles at altitudes of up to 18,000ft.
'Strength wise, it's the equivalent of a carthorse carrying a whale'
Two European stag beetle males (Lucanus cervus) fighting.
Beetles, in more than 350,000 varieties — 4,000 in Britain alone — constitute 40% of all insects. The sturdy dung beetle, invaluable for tidying up the planet, can manoeuvre 1,000 times its own weight, the equivalent of a carthorse carrying a whale.
Their front wings form hard protective shields (elytra) for the back ones, which fold neatly below, enabling what Sir David Attenborough calls ‘rough tasks’, including digging into earth or wood. Elytra also enclose and retain enough air for some beetles to scuba dive. The metallic-green tiger beetle runs so fast that it outpaces its vision, having to pause to check where its prey is.
Stag beetles, Britain’s largest, are specialised for wrestling rivals with huge mandible ‘horns’. Fireflies and glow worms (both beetles) are bioluminescent to attract mates, the former producing flashing signals when aloft, the latter, flightless, a steady Earth-bound glow.
'A human athlete matching this could leap across Park Lane'
A meadow grasshopper (Chorthippus parallelus) perching on a twig.
Grasshoppers can long-jump 20 times their own length — a human athlete matching this could leap across Park Lane. They possess powerful leg muscles and weigh very little, which helps, but also have an ability to wind part of their legs into tension, like a crossbow, which they release to supercharge their remarkable spring. (Fleas, without wings, have some elastic tissue that similarly assists their tremendous jumps: 40 times their body length).
Grasshoppers make sound by stridulation, rubbing their forewings against their hind legs. This insect violin-playing produces different chirping ‘songs’ according to species. It is, if you like that sort of thing, a kind of music, akin to the beguiling summer background of the cicada, a creature that spends up to 17 years as underground larva before emerging in synchronised profusion with millions of others to overwhelm the awaiting hungry birds.
Cicadas possess tymbals — vibrating membranes, natural tambourines — in their abdomens (some moths have these, too). Grasshoppers’ ears are in their abdomens, whereas crickets, their relatives, have theirs set conveniently on their forelegs.
'They can make bridges, rafts, acid and clones of themselves'
A trio of red ants (Myrmica rubra).
Ants are the world’s leading carnivores and constitute 20% of total land-animal biomass. They are essential to the ecosystem and Britain has more than 50 species, although not the fiercest.
Darwin called their brains ‘marvellous atoms of matter’. They possess an endogenous pedometer to record distance and a sort of internal sextant, to take mental bearings of the sun as they move about. Remembering these, they adjust for directional changes made when travelling and can march directly back to their nests. They rarely get lost.
It is difficult to comprehend how such minute mass-produced brains can achieve this— ours certainly can’t. There is prolific evidence about what ants actually do, but less certainty about how these activities are governed. Explanations such as collective intelligence, pheromone secretion, smell, neuron stimulus, genes, imitation or evolution raise as many questions as they answer.
Some ants keep slaves, some garden. Some farm aphids and enjoy drinking the honeydew secreted from their backsides. They can make bridges, rafts, acid and, in some cases, clones of themselves, as well as being able to carry many times their own bodyweight.
'They may recognise a human face and can learn by watching'
Nurse bees surrounding the open end of a queen cell with a larva inside.
After roving in search of nectar to drink, later to be regurgitated as honey, bees inform their fellows where to find a discovered nectar source by ‘waggle dancing’ with varying degrees of pattern or intensity inside the hive. This exercise apparently tells the next patrol where to go.
How do they know how to dance or, indeed, how to interpret such dancing, should they encounter it? Bees have been observed using improvised tools, as chimpanzees do, they may recognise a human face, can learn by watching and probably feel pain —especially when attacked by wasps, from which they evolved.
'May travel 100 miles in its three-week lifetime'
Common blue butterfly (Polyomatus icarus).
With their nocturnal relatives moths, butterflies are renowned for the colours, patterns and textures of their captivating, seemingly fragile, minutely scaled wings. (The scales are flattened hairs.) However, they can be remarkably energetic. The humble cabbage white, weighing only 0.05oz and with a wingspan of 1½in, may travel 100 miles in its three-week lifetime.
More impressive are painted ladies, weighing less than a gram, millions of which fly at 1,500ft and 30mph to England from North Africa and back, surviving wind, rain and storm, guided by the sun. Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation calls them ‘sophisticated travellers with a brain the size of a pinhead’.
Moth caterpillars, meanwhile, wrap themselves in silk. This, although ‘little more than insect spittle,’ notes Dr McGavin, is a wondrous substance, both in strength and texture, first exploited in neolithic China. Strands of silk, extraordinarily thin, are as strong as steel of similar gauge, smooth and elastic, too. Ballgowns and fine underwear are gifts from the chrysalis. Britain’s only indigenous silk moth is the emperor. Tiger moths can thwart bats’ hunting radar.
'They construct huge mounds, some resembling Gaudí’s cathedrals'
Termites seen crawling through decaying wood.
In Australia and elsewhere, termite communities of hundreds of thousands, focused on a distended queen (who may live to 40, kept productive by a tiny, energetic consort), construct huge mounds, some resembling Gaudí’s cathedrals, others large gravestones. These may be 20ft high, with much deeper basements, and are air-conditioned with chimneys, vaults, passages and nurseries. How this is achieved, in the dark, by minute, deaf workers, remains unknown.
'May live without their heads for several days'
Two dusky cockroaches (Ectobius lapponicus).
The unpopular cockroach can tolerate extremes of temperature and may live without food for several weeks, air for 45 minutes or their heads for several days. They have high radiation resistance and would probably survive atomic war.
'Champions of fecundity'
Fruit fly on a white flower.
Fruit flies are champions of fecundity, producing up to 26 generations in a year, and are invaluable for medical research because 70% of our genes have fruit-fly equivalents.
Aphids, meanwhile, reproduce parthenogenetically (no sex required), some-times supplying overwhelming quantities of themselves — only to be consumed by ladybird beetles, which will eat their own offspring when they finish the aphids.
This feature originally appeared in the July 29, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.